


Much Ado About Snowbaz

by GallaPlacidia



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Canon Divergent, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Get Together, M/M, Much Ado About Nothing, Post-Watford, Really really slow burn, Seven Minutes In Heaven, Shakespeare, Slow Burn, Texting, Watford, baz is depressed, eighth year au, like over the course of many years, you don't have to like Shakespeare you just have to like kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-21 08:57:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20690864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallaPlacidia/pseuds/GallaPlacidia
Summary: When Agatha and Dev finally start dating, they decide to trick Simon and Baz into falling in love with each other. All they have to do is convince both of them that the other is in love with them. What could go wrong? It's just a gay Watford Shakespeare fanfic you guys.“He pretends to hate Baz so that no one finds out how he really feels,” says Agatha, like she’s reading out loud from my diary and just changing the fucking names. (I don’t keep a diary, except for when I want to mess with Snow. He always reads everything I write, and never suspects it’s a trick. It’s adorable. And infuriating.)[...]“Poor Simon,” sighs Bunce. “Baz is so cruel to him.”“I know. No one knows how to get under his skin like Baz does. And all Simon wants is to open up and be loved.”I make a stifled sound in my throat. Luckily, they start packing up their things and don’t hear me.“Well, maybe I can find a spell to help him get over it,” says Bunce. “Since Baz is only ever going to make him feel like crap.”No no no no no—





	1. Chapter 1

**Baz**

Simon was about to either go off, or hit me. I had pushed him a bit too far, this time, mocking him about Agatha.

Agatha just started dating Dev, and Snow is convinced it’s all part of some mastermind plot I have to take over the world or whatever. (Snow is always quick to assign me motives that far outstrip my ambitions.)

So he’s very sensitive just now, which I misjudged. I’ve been off my game since the numpties. In every way. He’s clearly about to lose it. I sigh, because I don’t want to get punched, but he’ll hurt himself if he goes off.

“Come on, Snow. Hit me with your fist, since you can’t get me with your magic or your words.”

_Wham_.

Fucking hell, that hurts. I go sprawling backwards.

“Simon!” I hear Bunce dragging him away from me.

“Fuck you, Baz,” he shouts at me. I don’t bother answering. I stare up at the sky, one hand pressed to my left eye, which feels like it’s been popped. It’s never hurt this much before when he’s hit me (and he hasn’t hit me since 5th year); I think those six weeks in a coffin with no food have permanently weakened my immune system. Or whatever it is that stops me getting sick, and makes me heal so quickly.

“All right, Baz, mate?” It’s Dev.

“Just having a rest,” I say.

“Apparently Snow decked you.”

“A bit, yeah.”

“You okay?”

“Blissful. Thinking of starting a fight club, keep chasing that high.”

Dev pulls me to my feel and casts a health spell on me.

“Never works,” I say. “I think he punches with magic.”

“Mental. I wish you two would…”

“Just because you and Agatha are dating now doesn’t mean we can all be best friends, Dev.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s exhausting, isn’t it? Fighting him all the time?”

I laugh a little bitterly.

“That it is.”

**Dev**

“I completely agree,” says Agatha. “I wish they would get along better.”

Penelope Bunce sighs. She has been an unwelcome addition to my life since Agatha finally agreed to go out with me. Bunce is bloody terrifying.

“Simon’s been insufferable since you two started dating,” she says. “He’s convinced Baz is behind it somehow.”

“I wish he and Baz would just date each other,” says Agatha, and Niall and I laugh.

But Bunce looks serious.

“You know, Agatha, that’s not a bad idea.”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Niall. “As if Baz would date _Simon_.”

Agatha looks offended.

“As if _Simon_ would date _Baz_!”

“No, I’m serious,” says Bunce. “Remember in that Shakespeare play, _Much Ado About Nothing_? Benedick and Beatrice hate each other. But their friends convince both of them that the other is secretly in love with them, then they’re so flattered that they _actually_ fall in love with each other!”

“Simon’s straight,” points out Agatha. Bunce waves her hand dismissively.

“Oh, Simon doesn’t know _what_ he is.”

“Well, Baz is straight,” says Niall.

I clear my throat.

“Isn’t he?” asks Niall, sounding uncertain.

“I’ve heard…rumours,” I say.

“Really? Why wouldn’t he tell us?”

“When has Baz ever told us anything? Remember when he broke his ankle on that walk and we didn’t find out till two years later?”

Niall looks convinced.

“Yeah, all right, maybe he’s gay. So, what, we just tell him that Snow is in love with him?”

“No,” says Penny, looking thoughtful. “That’s too obvious. I think it would be best if they overhear it.”

She lays out her plan.

**Baz**

I’m in the library, trying and failing to concentrate. I feel utterly grim. Tired to the bone, and hungry (I think I may be hungry forever), and my eye is aching, and I just feel… more dead than usual.

And sad, I suppose.

I turn the page and take notes on the effect of emojis on magickal language. I keep fading in and out. Everything’s been worse since I was kidnapped. I thought of a lot of things that I can’t shake off. Wordless, awful feelings that coat the inside of my head; pernicious and unrelenting; I don’t know, I just don’t feel the same. Everything is harder all the time. My eye hurts.

“You can’t really think Simon is in love with Baz.”

I freeze. I can’t breathe. Then I realise I must have misheard, and relax.

It’s Bunce speaking. She’s in the next bay over from me, concealed by stacks of books.

“I don’t _think_ he’s in love with Baz. I _know_ he is,” says Wellbelove.

I think I’m going crazy. Am I hallucinating? Is this some weird Alice in Wonderland thing? Parallel universe? Wish-fulfilment fantasy? (Although I can’t say that my wishes are usually this indirect; they generally involve a lot more Simon than Agatha Wellbelove…)

“How can he be? Baz is horrible to him,” says Bunce. “He hates Baz.”

“He pretends to hate Baz so that no one finds out how he really feels,” says Agatha, like she’s reading out loud from my diary and just changing the fucking names. (I don’t keep a diary, except for when I want to fuck with Snow. He always reads everything I write, and never suspects it’s a trick. It’s adorable. And infuriating.)

“Ohhhh,” says Bunce. “You know, that actually makes sense. I mean, he’s totally obsessed with him. Really, how much plotting can Baz do while playing football?”

“Exactly. He just likes watching Baz run. Says he’s graceful and ruthless.”

I feel a smile creeping up on my face and pull myself together. This is nonsense. It’s madness.

Isn’t it?

“Poor Simon,” sighs Bunce. “Baz is so cruel to him.”

“I know. No one knows how to get under his skin like Baz does. And all Simon wants is to open up and be loved.”

I make a stifled sound in my throat. Luckily, they start packing up their things and don’t hear me.

“Well, maybe I can find a spell to help him get over it,” says Bunce. “Since Baz is only ever going to make him feel like crap.”

_No no no no no— _

“Yeah,” says Agatha. “It’d be different if Baz wasn’t so nasty to him all the time.”

“I’m not holding my breath for _that_ to change! Come on, let’s get some food.”

They exit the library noisily, leaving me like a smashed up village in the wake of a tsunami.

What. The fuck.

**Simon **

Penny told me she and Agatha would be in the rose garden, but when I’m almost there, I hear voices from behind the hedge. Male voices. Niall and Dev.

“Yeah, but Baz can’t _tell_ Snow he’s in love with him, can he?” says Dev. “Snow would kill him.”

_Excuse me?_

“Come off it, Snow isn’t homophobic,” says Niall.

“No, but he is planning on killing Baz at the final showdown or whatever. Anyway, Snow hates him. He’s always attacking him and threatening him.”

“Yeah, I know. It must be really hard on Baz.”

_Hard on Baz?_ I mouth, outraged. It’s hard on me! I’m the one with the psychopathic vampire roommate!

Wait, does this mean Baz is gay? How did I never find that out? Years of reading his diary and he never bothered to write that down?

“Well, that’s why he pretends to hate Snow so much. Salvage his pride. It must be pretty awful to be in love with someone who tells you they loathe you all the time.”

This is… biased reporting. Fake news. _Baz_ is the one constantly telling _me_ how much he can’t wait to kill me.

And then I realise.

It’s a trick. Baz is trying to trick me into thinking he’s in love with me. I don’t know what the endgame is, but I’m sure it’s nefarious. My stomach sinks with an emotion I recognise as disappointment, although it takes me a second to figure out what I’m disappointed by. It’s Baz, of course. The fact that he’s playing so dirty. I’m disappointed that he’s not being a worthier opponent. Really, really disappointed. Like, in my heart.

And honestly, the idea of Baz pining away from me is so laughable that I’m surprised at him. It’s not exactly a clever plan. He’s probably not even gay. He would have mentioned all this in his diaries. Instead all he ever talks about his homework. (He always writes it down wrong. Every time I read his diary, I get a heart attack because it says we have some huge essay due the next day, that it later turns out wasn’t due for a month. But sometimes, very occasionally, he writes something about Agatha, like “Wellbelove looked at me with doe-eyes today, wondering what I should do about _that_…” and so I have to keep reading.)

“Hopefully he’ll get over Snow soon,” says Niall.

“Yeah, hopefully. He deserves better than Snow, honestly. He deserves someone who won’t break his heart,” says Dev.

I roll my eyes. What heart? Baz is made of witty retorts and monstrous intentions. He’s not writing love poetry in a corner. Not the type. He’s never even had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or whatever. (Is he gay? I really want to know. Not that I would use it against him or anything. But it would be good to know. Just for background information.)

I’m too angry with him to stay any longer. I storm back to Mummer’s House, determined to fight it out with him here and now.

**Dev**

“How did it go?” asks Agatha, as I stroke her pretty blonde hair. Merlin, our Christmas cards are going to be works of art.

“Snow heard us. How about you guys?”

“Baz heard us too. Do you think it will work?”

I shrug.

“What’s weird is that I didn’t really have to make much up,” says Agatha. I sigh and lean against her.

“Yeah, me neither. It all came pretty naturally.”

“Do you think…” starts Agatha.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

Agatha laughs and shakes her head.

“I’m glad I’m out of it,” she says.

“Me too,” I say, and kiss her.

**Baz **

I’m too scattered even to hunt. I’ve been struggling to hunt recently, anyway, because I’ve developed an inconvenient and highly embarrassing fear of the dark. And I get tired when I try to eat or drink. Just… weary. Well, I’m weary all the time, since the numpties.

But today that’s not what it is. I feel electric. Because maybe, _maybe_, it’s true. Maybe Simon Snow, absolute idiot, has done the stupidest thing he could think of, and started to _like_ me.

I wouldn’t even consider believing it, if it hadn’t been Bunce. But she knows him better than anyone, and if she thinks it’s a possibility….

Another rat gets away from me, and I give up. Let there be great rejoicing in the rat kingdom tonight; their scourge is too emotionally charged to harm them.

I stumble up to my (our) bedroom and lie on my bed, not even taking my shoes off, because my fingers are too numb and cold. My eye is throbbing. I bet it looks appalling. I don’t even know what I’m doing— waiting for Snow? And for what? Will I pull him into a wincing embrace and cry _“Kiss me, I’m yours!” _

No, I’ve got to play this right. Even if it is true, he won’t trust me right away. And if it isn’t; if Bunce and Wellbelove were somehow mistaken, I don’t want to embarrass myself.

But I am going to be gentler with him. In case he really does like me. (I don’t dare think “love”, that seems presumptuous.) I don’t want to hurt him again, if he does. I hope I haven’t hurt him already.

I curl up into myself, hand on my aching eye, and try to stay awake until he comes back.

**Simon **

When I get to our bedroom, I find Baz curled up on top of his covers, fully clothed and fast asleep. I hover uncertainly by the door, thinking of slamming it to wake him up so we can fight about his latest treachery, but he looks so strangely… small. He never used to sleep curled up. He used to lie flat on his back, like he was sleeping in a coffin (fucking vampire). But since coming back to school eight weeks late, he’s consistently gone for the fetal position instead.

Penny says it’s weird that I notice stuff like that.

It’s also weird that he’s fallen asleep with his shoes on. Without thinking I go and undo the laces, pulling them off his feet. He doesn’t stir, although closer up I notice that he’s shivering. He curls a little smaller. When he tucks his hands under his sharp chin, I catch sight of his eye where I hit him. Fuck, it actually looks really bad, the skin is all delicate and purpling, which is weird. One of the infuriating things about fighting Baz in 5th year was that he never seemed to bruise. What’s wrong with him? Is he okay? I think about shaking him awake to ask him (_“Where were you for eight weeks and what happened to you? What changed? Why are you still so thin and tired looking?”_) but instead I pull his duvet out from under him and cover him up. He smiles a little in his sleep and his long, elegant fingers clutch at the duvet.

What am I doing? I get ready for bed and turn off the lights without looking at him again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Baz **

He took off my shoes and tucked me in while I was sleeping…?

I risk a quick glance at him. He’s still pressed into his pillow, only his bronze curls sticking out like fireworks. I’m staring. I shouldn’t let myself stare. It’s early to start hoping, I think.

But he did take off my shoes and tuck me in while I was sleeping.

**Simon **

When I wake up, I’m determined to confront him. He hasn’t pulled anything big on me in like two years, so I know his whole “Convince Snow I’m in love with him” set-up is going to have quite the punchline.

He’s already in the shower. Usually I would go down to breakfast, but I want to get this over and done with.

Except, when he comes out of the bathroom, he still has a black eye.

This is totally unprecedented. I’ve never known him to have any injury that lasted longer than a day. (Although, now I think about it, he has been walking with a slight limp since he got back to school.) I had this whole speech prepared about how he’s an untrustworthy monster; but all I can look at is the bruised skin on his face.

He starts to sneer, then seems to catch himself and stop. (Trying to trick me into thinking he’s in love with me. It’s not going to work.)

“All right, Snow?” he says.

“What’s wrong with your eye?”

He laughs.

“You punched it. Have you forgotten already?”

“Yeah, but why hasn’t it healed yet?”

He touches it gingerly with his fingertips. I can tell by how cautious he is that it still hurts him. The thought makes me feel strangely nauseous.

“I’ve been a bit under the weather, lately,” he says. His voice is vague.

“Vampires don’t get sick.”

“That’s a non sequitor.” He pushes past me.

“No, it isn’t. Because you’re a vampire.”

Usually all vampire accusations get one of two reactions: he ignores me completely, or he says something catastrophically cruel. But now he fixes me with his grey eyes. His eyelashes are long, like a girl’s. They’re longer than Agatha’s, and she wears mascara.

“If I was a vampire—which I’m not—what then, Snow?”

“Then I finally get the Mage to expel you and have the room to myself.”

He nods, thoughtfully.

“They’d have me killed, you know. In this hypothetical situation.”

“No, they wouldn’t. They’d just, like, defang you or whatever.”

“Hmm.” He’s still watching me so steadily, one eye beautiful and perfect, the other damaged and hurting. “Snap my wand.”

I frown. The idea of Baz without magic is unnatural.

“No, they wouldn’t do that,” I say.

“Of course they would. And then I would light a match and put it on my tongue, and…_whoosh_!”

He smiles, and I take a step backwards.

“You wouldn’t kill yourself. You have to kill me first.”

He tilts his head.

“No, I would. In a heartbeat. If I were a vampire, and you discovered it, and told the Mage. If, if, if.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why he’s telling me this. He seems… sincere. Which is _sincerely_ disturbing.

I’d never really thought about what would happen if I exposed him as a vampire.

Clearly, he’s thought about it quite a lot.

“Baz…”

“I just thought, since accusing me of being a vampire is your favourite game, that we might play it out to its logical conclusion.” He looks at his watch. “You’ll miss breakfast if you’re not careful,” he says, and holds open the door for me. I duck under his arm and go downstairs.

It isn’t until I get to breakfast that I realise that he’s probably just making up all that stuff about what the Mage would do to him to get me to stop telling everyone he’s a vampire.

I keep imagining Baz dropping a match on his tongue, though, and it doesn’t make me feel as triumphant as you’d think. I guess it wouldn’t be a very satisfying victory. If anything kills Baz, I want it to be me. I think that’s why I feel so unsettled by the whole conversation. Because I hate him so much.

Business as usual.

**Penny**

I’ve been watching Baz all morning, and I have to hand it to Agatha: this really might work. He doesn’t scowl at Simon at breakfast. When Simon accidentally says “orgasm” instead of “organism” in Biological Transformation, the whole class snickers, but Baz doesn’t say a word; and I bet it’s not for a lack of put-downs.

But the real test comes in fifth period; Americanisms. We’re doing **the right to bear arms**, a tricky spell that should put a gun in your hands. (I don’t approve of it being taught to schoolchildren, even eighth years, but it’s part of the Mage’s reforms. I think he’s just scoping out students for his army, personally.)

Simon, bless him, is struggling. He says the words over and over with no magic in them, getting more and more frustrated. Then, he says them with so much magic in them that people’s sleeves blow off in the blast, ripped fabric swirling around the room, mingling with his heady, smoky magic. I find it hard to think straight when he’s leaking like this.

“Simon,” I say. “It’s okay, calm down…!”

He shouts the words again, and his shirt rips down the middle. Miss Possibelf is, as always, completely ill-equipped to deal with this.

But then Baz steps forward; puts a hand on Simon’s arm. I look at him warily. He has a bad habit of prodding Simon when he’s like this.

“Snow,” he says, his voice soothing, like he’s talking to a rearing horse. “You’ve written it down wrong, that’s all.”

**“What?**” says Simon with magic (ridiculous). Baz rolls his eyes as he’s compelled by Simon’s magic to point at his notebook.

“Look. You’ve written ‘the right to BARE arms’. That’s why it isn’t working.”

Simon pulls at his hair in confusion, following where Baz’s fingers are highlighting his mistake. Baz’s other hand is still on Simon’s shoulder.

“How’s it supposed to be spelled?” asks Simon, defensively.

“‘Bear,’” says Baz. “Like…” he holds up his hands as claws and growls. It’s very cute, but Simon steps away, looking suspicious.

“You’re just trying to get me killed.”

“No, Simon, he’s right, that’s how it’s spelled,” I say. I’m annoyed that I didn't catch his mistake myself.

Baz nods at me and slips back into his own seat without a word.

**“The right to bear arms,**” says Simon, and instantly he’s holding two AK-47s.

He turns around to glare at Baz, who throws up his hands in alarm.

“Simon. Leave him alone.”

“I don’t trust him, Penny.”

Overhearing that Baz is in love with him doesn’t seem to have affected him very much. But it’s clearly affected _Baz_ a great deal…

**Simon **

Baz has been weird all day. Silent and, like, helpful. _Weird_. I hate it.

Actually, I don’t hate it. It’s just that I keep waiting for the hammer to drop. I don’t like dreading the change back to his usual self.

I follow him back to Mummer’s House after dinner.

“What are you playing at?” I demand. We’re walking up the stairs.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. What was that, in class? **The right to bear arms?**” I didn’t mean to say it with magic. Now I’m pointing a gun at him. He eyes it uncomfortably.

“Do you mind?” he says, as if I’ve just been mildly rude to him at a picnic.

**“As you were,”** I say. The gun disappears. “Why were you helping me?”

“Because you needed it. Crowley, Snow, it’s not rocket science.” Suddenly he goes pale—_paler_, if you can believe it, and tries to catch himself on the wall as his knees buckle under him.

I’m at his side in a single leap. I wrap an arm around him and pull him up. He’s heavy and floppy against me. I’m tempted to think it’s a trick, except that he looks desperately embarrassed, and is trying to shake me off.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“You’re collapsing on staircases. What’s wrong with you?”

He laughs mirthlessly.

“Excellent question, Snow,” he says, faintly. “Hit the nail on the head, as always.”

He breaks free of me and immediately falls over. He keeps laughing that awful laugh, and when I try to pull him up he resists, turning around to sit on the step. He leans his head against the wall.

“You go up,” he says. He sounds exhausted. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

I hover uncertainly above him. Maybe he’s planning an ambush. Maybe if I leave him he’ll find some way to torture me. Also, if I leave him, he might pass out and hurt himself.

I sit next to him.

"Seriously, Baz. What's wrong?"

"I told you. I've been a bit under the weather. It's not a big deal."

“What happened to you, when you didn’t come back to school?” I ask, and my voice is softer than I thought it would be.

He only shakes his head.

“I know you were plotting something against me,” I say.

He looks at me.

“Do you really think that?”

“Well, yeah.”

He sighs.

“It’s… embarrassing,” he says.

“What is?”

“Where I was.”

He’s going to tell me? Really? Just like that?

“Can’t be more embarrassing than me, blowing the clothes off everyone in class today.”

“It was only sleeves, Snow, you were hardly sexually assaulting us.”

“I won’t make fun of you, whatever it is.”

He looks at me in disbelief.

“I won’t!” I say.

“No, you will.” He sighs again. “It was numpties.”

I can’t help it. I laugh.

“You were attacked by _numpties_? What did they do, snuggle you for warmth?”

“They wouldn’t have found that very satisfying, I shouldn’t think,” says Baz. He’s turned his face back to the wall, and I feel… bad. For making fun of him. Which is _crazy_.

“I’m sorry. Okay, these ferocious numpties. They attacked you.”

“They didn’t really attack me. It’s sort of worse.” He laughs. “They kidnapped me.”

He looks disgusted with himself. I can see why he’s embarrassed— the great Baz Pitch, kidnapped by numpties. No wonder he’s seemed so cowed this term.

Although it doesn’t explain why his eye is still bruised. Why he sleeps differently. Why he just almost fainted in a stairway.

“For eight weeks?”

“Six. I was recovering for two.”

“Recovering from what?”

“Honestly, Snow, this is making me very uncomfortable. Can't we sate your curiosity some other time?”

“No. Because you look like shit and I want to know why.”

He wrinkles his nose.

“Fine,” he says, coldly. “Because they didn’t really feed me. Not food, anyway. They appeared to have made some assumptions about me, rather as you tend to, and kept me in a coffin for six weeks.”

“A… a coffin?”

“That doesn’t prove anything,” he says, sharply.

“They didn’t _feed_ you?”

“Not food.”

“Shit, Baz, that’s… that must have been terrifying!”

“Pitches don’t feel terror.” He tips his head down so his hair falls in a curtain in front of his face.

“I wish I’d known,” I say. “I was looking for you everywhere. It was driving me mad.”

“What would you have done, Snow? Rescued me?”

“Well, yeah.”

He looks up at me unexpectedly and we’re nose to nose because I leant in to hear him when he was quiet. I can see how flawless his skin is, like creamy paper. How the dark hairs of his eyebrows grow out of him, how his cheekbones jut out under his grey eyes.

“It’s embarrassing,” he whispers.

“No, it’s not,” I say, and I don’t know why but I put my hand on his face. He closes his eyes. He’s cold and so delicate; I feel like if I push too hard on his bones they’d crack, like porcelain.

The door at the bottom of the stairwell opens and I hear voices. I drop my hand away. Baz’s eyes fly open.

“Come on,” I say. “It’s late.”

I don’t help him up. I just go to our bedroom, and a few minutes later he follows behind me.

We go to bed in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so curious to see how Wayward Son will affect everyone's fics! Thank you for reading and commenting, it means a lot to me :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Simon**

“Baz is pretending to be in love with me so that he can kill me.”

Penny lowers her coffee cup as I start buttering my scone.

“Good morning,” she says, steadily. “How did you sleep?”

“I’m serious, Penny. This is bad. I don’t know what he’s plotting, but he’s pulling out all the stops. I’m really freaked out.”

So freaked out I keep thinking about how his skin felt under my hand.

Penny sighs.

“Simon… maybe Baz just fancies you.”

“Of course he doesn’t fancy me!”

“Why not?”

Why not? Is she mad? Has she _seen_ Baz?

“Because…” I can’t even muster the words. Because he’s gorgeous. He’s posh. He’s rich beyond belief. He’s the actual heir to the Pitch fortune, not the only-sort-of heir to the Mage, who by the way, hasn’t spoken to me once this year. Baz speaks four languages perfectly and is on the football team and his clothes always look ironed even though he doesn’t iron them and he smells like a fancy shop and he plays the violin like a miracle and he hates me and…

“Simon?”

“Sorry. Got lost in my head.”

“I gathered. Why is it so inconceivable that Baz might actually like you?”

“Just look at him, Penny!”

We both look at Baz. He feels our gaze immediately, probably because of his vampire superpowers or whatever. Even his dark secrets are sexy. If I was an evil creature, I’d probably be something stupid, like a leprechaun. But Noooo, Baz Pitch is a vampire, like Edward fucking Cullen.

I’m glaring at him. He raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t sneer.

“See,” I mutter. “He’s doing it now.”

Dev says something to him, and he turns away from me. I wonder what they’re talking about. How to kill me, probably.

“I truly don’t think this is a plot, Simon.”

“He keeps confiding in me,” I say.

“That’s sweet!”

“It’s sinister.” I jerk her arm. “Maybe he’s trying to worm my secrets out of me!”

Penny snorts.

“What secrets?”

Good point.

“Maybe he just wants to be friends,” says Penny.

I glower across the room. Baz doesn’t look up. Prick.

“Well,” I say, mutinously. “_Two_ can play at that game.”

**Baz **

I’m peacefully working in the library when Simon plops his bag down on the desk and sinks into the chair beside me.

“Will you help me with my Latin homework.” It’s not a question. He looks furious.

“…Now?”

“Fine, fuck you!” He stands.

“Crowley, you’re unstable. Yes, I’ll help you with your bloody Latin prep; sit down.”

He sits, observing me suspiciously.

“Well? Get out your prep so we can work on it.”

“Oh. Right.”

It quickly becomes apparent that he’s in a muddle about the ablative case (it comes up more often than you’d think). I walk him through it several times, and he becomes less belligerent when he realises I’m not making fun of him for being confused. After about half an hour, he’s wiped out, so I tell him a few anecdotes about Roman emperors to give him a break. He seems to enjoy them.

**Simon**

Baz is so funny when he tells me about some Roman emperor named Caligula that I literally cry with laughter. He carries on, a small smile playing about his lips, telling me about Caligula and his madnesses, until I my stomach hurts from laughing. Finally he stops talking, and I rest my head on the table, trying to catch my breath.

“I hate that you’re funny,” I tell him.

He leans back in his chair. His eye has finally started to heal. I’m relieved. I was a bit worried that I’d permanently disfigured him.

“Was that a compliment, Snow?”

“No.”

“Okay. Just checking.”

I really do understand the Latin stuff better, now. He’s much more patient than Penny, and he comes up with good analogies to explain things. And his voice is pretty. I don’t know how voices can be pretty, but somehow his is, when he’s helping me.

**Baz **

It happens again later that week. He comes to me and asks for help, with Greek this time. I agree so fast it’s embarrassing. Then it keeps happening. He still glares at me at breakfast, and we largely ignore each other in the room. He made a snide remark about me being a vampire when I came back from the Catacombs the other day, which made my heart constrict. He practically growls at me if I try to help him class. But in the library, a few times a week, he sits and listens to me. We make eye contact. He laughs at the things I tell him.

“Here, let me show you,” I say, one day. He’s still struggling with the ablative. I take the pencil out of his hand to write something, but my hand brushes against his. I’m seized by momentary madness, and I let my fingers stroke the back of his hand before drawing away. He frowns at me, but doesn’t say anything.

I’m glad I can’t blush.

That evening he makes another comment about how I’m plotting, and I remind myself to be patient. We haven’t trusted each other for years. We can take our time, now.

It’s getting harder to convince myself that he doesn’t want this too.

**Simon**

In December, the Mage sends me to go fight some harpies. He doesn’t even find me in person- just sends a bird. It’s fine. I go to the weird harpy island, kill a bunch of them, get wounded, go off, come to as I’m stumbling up the stairs to Mummer’s House.

Baz jumps back as I fall into our room. He covers his mouth in horror at the sight of me. At least, I think it’s horror at first, but then he keeps his hand there, staring at all the blood, and I wonder if it’s his fangs he’s covering.

“Shit, you’re not going to eat me, are you?”

He looks unbelievably offended. I grab his wrist before he can go.

“Don’t leave me,” I say, inexplicably. His eyes are wide. He shakes his hand away from mine and stares at it. It’s covered in my blood. Oops.

I lie down as he fetches a notebook and scribbles something on it.

_“I’m summoning Penny,”_ he’s written.

He leaves our room for a moment. I hear his muffled voice casting the bird. When he returns, he’s still got his hand over his mouth, and he paces back and forth. Honestly, he seems more distressed by my condition than I am. I'm not seriously injured, although I’m in quite a bit of pain. I wince as I find a deep, bloody gash on my arm.

He looks up at the sound, as if he's trying to decide something, and then his shoulders sag. He perches on the edge of my bed and quietly mutters a healing spell through his hand. His voice sounds all funny.

“Baz, I don’t care about the stupid fangs.” He glares at me and casts another spell, still covering his teeth.

“Baz, don’t be such a prat.” I tug his hand away from his mouth. He freezes.

Of bloody course he looks good with fangs.

A long silence extends between us while I examine them. They're sharp and white. I kind of want to prick my finger on one of them. 

“Are you going to tell the Mage?” he asks, finally. His voice sound stiff, as if he's trying not to care about my answer.

“What the fuck? Obviously not! You as good as told me you’d kill yourself if I did!”

“I should have thought that would incentivise you all the more.”

“No one gets to kill you but me, Baz.” I reach out and cup his chin. It’s like last time; delicate and cold and fragile, I just want to pull him close and make sure no one smashes him. He’s gone very still. My thumb brushes his lips, edging towards his fangs.

“Careful,” he says.

“They’re cool,” I say.

“You’re an idiot.”

And then he reaches out to touch _my_ face. There’s a cut on my eyebrow. He strokes the skin around it so gently that it feels like there’s a kind of magic to it. Then he digs his long, cool fingers into my hair.

“How are you bleeding from your _scalp_?”

I shrug. He removes his hand and looks at his bloodied fingers.

“You can taste it if you want, I don’t mind,” I say.

“Excuse me?” Fucking hell, he can make his voice cold when he wants to.

“My blood. It’s all over the place. No point in wasting it, right?”

**“Clean as a whistle,”** he casts, and I feel his magic wash over me. He goes to the bathroom to rinse his hands.

“Did I like… offend you? Is this some kind of vampire etiquette I don’t know about?”

“I think it’s common courtesy not to ask people to drink your bodily fluids, Snow.”

His fangs are gone. It's a shame; I liked them. 

"Is it because you're worried you wouldn't be able to stop? Like Edward Cullen with Bella?"

"Please don't reference Twilight in my presence."

  
"Have you read it?"

He doesn't answer.

"There's no way you haven't. You've read everything." 

"I read the first book. It was troubling."

I grin.

"What if I had, like, a paper cut? Would that be a snack for you?"

"Genuinely, shut up."

"Hey." 

He's holding his elbows, looking down at this knees as he leans against the bathroom door.

"I really, really don't care that you're a vampire."

"You've spent years trying to out me, Snow."

"I know. I'm sorry. I didn't really understand."

He's opening his mouth to say something when Penny bursts into the room.

“Simon! Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine!”

Baz has quietly slipped away.

“Was Baz here when you got back?”

“Yeah. Penny, he’s a vampire. He really is.”

She looks alarmed.

“Did he hurt you?” she asks, urgently.

“No! No.” I stare at the door he just went through. “I… I don’t think he would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not loving the flow of this story bc it feels too episodic somehow, but we'll see how it turns out I guess!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter one this time!

**Baz**

“Help me with my Latin prep?”

I nod, tightly. We haven’t really spoken since the other day. I’m all wrong-footed now that he knows I’m a vampire. I wonder if he’s freaking out about it as much as I am. I wonder if he’s still wearing his cross necklace to ward me off. I wonder if he still fancies me.

“I’m trying to translate this Ovid passage but I haven’t got a clue what he’s banging on about.”

“Sex, probably,” I say, without thinking. Simon blushes. I clear my throat. “That’s, uh, that’s usually what Ovid’s talking about. He’s really into it. He was actually exiled from Rome because he wrote some pretty scandalous poetry about Emperor Augustus’ granddaughter, Julia…”

_Merlin. Why can’t I shut up? _

“Baz.”

Thank God. I think if he hadn’t interrupted, I’d have just carried on monologuing about the Julio-Claudian dynasty for the rest of time.

“Snow,” I say, curtly.

Simon rubs the back of his neck anxiously with one hand.

“I, uh. It. The other day—”

“Are you going somewhere with this, Snow?”

“Yes! Look, can you not be a prick for a second, I’m trying to thank you.”

I laugh.

“You don’t have to thank me for not eating you, Snow. I don’t get a cookie every time I refrain from murder.”

“Actually, I sort of think you should. Get a cookie. For not hurting people. Your self-control is really impressive.”

I don’t want to talk about this. This makes me feel so small. Like someone no one would ever want to be. Would ever want to love.

“Don’t,” he says. “Whatever you’re thinking. Stop.”

And he touches my face _again_. It feels like the other times. Warm. Soothing. Impossible. I lean my cheek into his hand, and he rests his forehead against mine.

“I can’t just not think,” I say.

“Try,” he breathes.

His mouth is so close to mine. I’m staring at it. He’s staring at mine.

“Simon,” I start, and then he kisses me.

It’s. Well.

He’s got his hand in my hair, so I let myself touch his. It’s not like how I imagined. A little less soft. I want to tug it all out and keep it. I want to bite him. As if he can read my mind, he bites my lip, and I gasp a little, like a startled virgin. (Which I am.)

I’m sitting in the library with one hand on my Ovid translation and the other in Simon’s hair, and his lips are moving against mine. This is way too specific and… academic to be a dream. You’d think it would be enough to finally turn off my brain, but no. My mind is on overdrive. I’m trying desperately to store everything in my long term memory. I’m wondering if I should move the hand that’s still on my Latin prep and put it somewhere on his body. But where? I’m trying to stop myself from making any embarrassingly eager noises. I’m hoping I’m not a shit kisser. Why didn’t I just make out with that guy in Amsterdam last summer; get some bloody practice in? Simon Snow has obviously already done his 10,000 hours of kissing with Wellbelove because he’s a fucking expert.

And then he pulls away.

One look at his face clues me in to the fact that this wasn’t the Fairytale Ending kiss. The one where we’re finally happy boyfriends.

No, this is the We Shouldn’t Have Done That kiss.

“Why have you been pretending you fancy me?” he asks. He has the nerve to sound angry.

“I beg your pardon?”

“All this month. You’ve been pretending you’re in love with me or something.”

“I most certainly have not.” _Been pretending. _

“Don’t lie.”

“Snow, _you_ just kissed _me_.”

“I heard what Dev and Niall said! I know you meant for me hear them!”

He looks enraged. I have no clue what he’s talking about.

“This may surprise you, Snow, but I don’t actually give my friends scripts for them to read off in my absence. Kindly explain yourself.”

“Dev said you were in love with me!”

I throw back my head in exasperation.

“Dev doesn’t know _anything_ about my feelings for you!”

“I know they meant for me to overhear!”

And then my heart ties itself into a knot.

I put my head into my knuckles and shake my hair in front of my face.

“Oh, no,” I say.

“What?”

“They’ve Much Ado About Nothinged us.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

I can barely speak through my disappointment.

“It’s a Shakespeare play, you uneducated lout. I overheard Bunce and Wellbelove talking about how you fancied me. About a month ago.”

“But I don’t fancy you!” He sounds outraged. He’s right to be. It was an outrageous thing for me to fall for. Only someone outrageously fucking stupid would have let himself believe something so preposterous as Simon Snow actually liking me.

“Yes, that’s clear from this conversation.”

He shakes my hand away from my face. I steel my expression just in time.

“You didn’t _believe_ them, did you?” he asks.

I don’t answer.

“You _did_!” he cries. “You arrogant twat!”

“Fuck you,” I say, picking up my books and almost knocking my chair over in my effort to get away from him.

It’s a distinctly Snow-ish way to exit the library. It feels like shit.

I'm such a fucking idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it's very encouraging :) Enjoying geeking out about the Roman Empire over here


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seven minutes in heaven! A game I never actually played as a teenager and therefore must write about so that I can experience it vicariously!

**Penny**

Simon comes blaring up to me in the dining hall.

“You told Baz I fancied him??”

I look over at Baz, who has certainly heard, because _everyone_ has heard what Simon just said.

Baz is intently focused on his mug.

“Calm down, Simon.”

“Why would you do that??”

“I thought it would help you two get along better. And it did, didn’t it?”

Simon makes an exasperated sound.

“Yeah, because Baz’s ego is out of control, and he would rather have me as a minion than as an enemy!”

“Was he treating you like a minion?”

Simon stops his blustering.

“No.”

“Simon… I’ve been watching Baz this month, and I really think he likes you. How did all this come up, anyway?”

Simon flushes.

“I kissed him, then accused him of pretending to be in love with me, and then he told me he’d overheard you and Aggie in the library.”

“You kissed him? Why?”

“I don’t know, because he looked all gorgeous and troubled and he called me Simon! What’s your point?”

I raise an eyebrow at him.

“My point is that he likes you.” And that Simon apparently likes him back.

“He would have mentioned it in his diary.”

“You need to stop reading that.”

“Actually, it’s been kind of weird in the last month. He hasn’t mentioned Agatha once. And he’s been writing the homework down correctly. And what societies are giving out food where. I guess he’s just been concentrating more.”

I’ve long suspected that diary is a fake. This confirms it.

“Did he kiss you back?”

“…Yeah.”

“Why would he do that if he didn’t want to?”

Simon narrows his eyes.

“That’s just what I’ve been trying to figure out. He’s such a sneaky bastard.”

“Just _talk_ to him, Simon.”

“That’s exactly what he wants me to do, probably. When have I ever come off better for talking to Baz?”

“Oh, trying to think, maybe…_all the times he’s helped you with your lessons over the past month?_”

“He’s playing a long game.”

I give up. I just give up.

**Baz**

I’m out of practice when it comes to cruelty, but it turns out it’s in my muscle memory. After our conversation in the library—our _kiss_ in the library— I go back to treating Simon like a piece of shit. It’s amazing how easy it is. I sometimes wonder that I ever didn’t.

I mock him in lessons when the teachers can’t hear. I trip him in corridors. I write increasingly sexual things about Wellbelove in my fake diary. I smirk and cut him off when he stutters at me in our bedroom. I spell our window shut. I take inconveniently long showers when I know he needs to brush his teeth.

In return, he smashes my books off my shelf. He breaks the window in our bedroom so that it’s freezing all the time. He pours my shampoo and conditioner down the sink. He makes fun of me when he finds out I’m not back on the football team. (My leg’s still fucked.) He ostentatiously wears his cross outside his clothes.

That one hurts.

I would go harder on him, but I’m too tired. Anyway, none of it exorcises the memory of his lips on mine. That will probably haunt me till I die. Again, I mean. The second death; the one he’ll give me.

The first week after The Incident, he hovers near my desk in the library once or twice, as if he’s considering asking me for help with his Latin. He thinks better of it.

Even Dev, who is historically oblivious, notices that I seem down. He keeps trying to make me hang out with him and Wellbelove. It’s sort of touching, in a horrible way: he likes her so much that he thinks everyone would benefit from being around her.

In December, he and Niall force me to go to a party they’re throwing in the Old Bar Room.

I’m not planning on staying long, but someone’s brought rum. I’ve always liked rum. Glides down the throat. I’m sitting quietly in a corner, scrolling through my phone so that people won’t approach me as I glug at the bottle, when Niall picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

“Niall!” I try to sound imperious, but it’s hard when you’re upside down. He’s hurting my sore leg. “Put me down!”

“We’re playing Seven Minutes in Heaven!”

“If you want to snog me, just snog me, you tit!”

He dumps me on the floor in the middle of a circle of our classmates. I spot Snow, looking smug and self-satisfied. Dev blindfolds me.

I’m starting to panic.

I’m extremely Not Keen on the dark.

“Look, I’ll go in, I just don’t want to wear this,” I say. My voice sounds rather squeaky. “It’ll mess up my hair.”

“You can take it off once you’re in there,” says Bunce. “It’ll be pitch black, I’ve cast a spell. Oh— and no magic.”

Someone takes my wand.

“Does it have to be dark?” says Simon.

“Yes! That’s part of the game.”

“I don’t want to play,” I say.

“Don’t worry Baz, we won’t send you in with anyone too minging,” says Dev, and he shoves me through a door.

I hear it shut behind me and I scrabble to remove the blindfold. He’s tied it so tightly that I can’t. My heartbeat is irregular. I’m freezing, soaked in cold sweat. I feel like I can’t breathe.

Finally I rip the blindfold off.

It makes absolutely no difference. It’s just like in the coffin. No matter how widely I open my eyes, there’s nothing I can make out.

I feel my way to a wall and sink to the floor.

I couldn’t turn off my brain when Simon kissed me. But terror shuts me down.

**Simon **

“Who should we send in?” asks Dev. “Titania, what d’you reckon?”

“Oh,” says Titania, icily. “I’m so honoured you don’t think I’m ‘too minging’ for the great Baz Pitch.”

The closet where they threw Baz is silent. He must be freaking out. Did no one else notice how squeaky his voice went about the blindfold? He was in a coffin for six weeks, not knowing if that was _it_ for him. Trapped all alone in the dark. Hungry and hurt. He _hates_ the dark.

“What, we can’t call girls ugly now?” complains Dev. “Anyway, you know you’re the second fittest girl in school, after Agatha.”

“Dev,” admonishes Agatha.

“Just pick someone!” I shout. They won’t start the clock until someone’s in there with him. He won’t say he’s scared; he’d never admit it. He’ll just go all pale and weak like he did on the stairs that time. _“I’ll be fine in a minute.”_ He’s such a fucking martyr.

“The second fittest girl?” says Titania. “I ought to put that on my university applications. What a stunning endorsement.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, start the clock!” I say, throwing my wand at Penny, and storming into the closet.

It’s thick, velvety blackness. I can’t see a thing. I can’t hear anything, either (Penny’s soundproofed us). It suddenly occurs to me that if Baz wanted to murder me, now would be the perfect time.

“Baz?”

Then I hear him. Laboured breathing. I make my way unsteadily towards the sound and nearly fall over him. He’s curled up against the wall. I touch him blindly, my hands falling on his trembling shoulder.

“Hey, Baz, hey, hey, hey…” I don’t even know what I’m saying. I wrap myself around him and pull him into my chest. I kiss his eyes to see if he’s crying. He’s not. He’s just struggling to breathe. “It’s okay, I’m here, you’re all right…”

Suddenly he flinches away from me with a shocked hiss.

“Something burned me,” he says.

“My cross.”

He gives a shuddery laugh and edges down the wall.

“Keeping you safe from the monsters in the dark,” he mutters.

“I’ll take it off.” I remove it and toss it behind me.

He’s slipped further away. I close the gap and pull him into me again.

“Are you okay?” I whisper into his soft, slippery hair.

“I feel like I’ve been buried alive,” he says, so quietly. I kiss his eyebrows. I follow the ridge of his ear with my finger. “I suppose that’s a stupid thing to say,” he continues. “‘Buried alive.’ It’s probably the right place for me, underground, with the dead.”

“You’re not dead,” I say, working my hand into his hair, kissing his jaw. “You’re so not dead.”

“Are you going to kill me, Simon Snow?”

“What do you think?” I kiss the back of his neck. His head is nestled into my shoulder.

He doesn’t answer. I wonder what he thinks. In the dark I can only piece him together with my fingers and my mouth; I have to keep touching him or I won’t know where he is, what he’s up to, whether he’s plotting something. I wrap strands of his hair around my thumb. I feel his chin against my chest, his legs against my legs. I can’t seem to pull him close enough. I touch his face again, and without my sight it’s more obvious than ever how perfect he is.

“Are all vampires so… exquisite?” I ask him. “Or is that just you?”

His hand touches my chest.

“Ex…exquisite?”

“Yeah. Beautiful. Is that a vampire thing?”

“You think I’m beautiful?”

“Stop fishing for compliments and answer my question.”

He’s quiet for so long that I think he won’t answer. His cool hand rests just beneath my collarbone.

“I don’t know how much of me is me, and how much of me is... because I was bitten. Sort of hard to know what’s personality, and what’s... illness.”

“If this is what being bitten made people, everyone would do it.”

He lifts his head up.

“What are you doing, Simon?”

It’s so dark. Things don’t count in the dark. I press my nose against his and kiss him. He kisses back, like last time.

It’s so good.

He feels just right. We stop for a moment and I wonder if he’s going to say something, but he only kisses me again.

I get why the game is called Seven Minutes in Heaven now. He’s heavenly.

**Baz**

The door opens. Light comes flooding in, rendering all the terrors of the darkened closet prosaic and harmless.

Snow practically jumps away from me. I’m tipsy enough to find it funny, at least on the face of it. Really though, I’m thinking, Do straight people have to deal with this shit?

“Simon, stay in there,” says Keris. “We’ve got someone else lined up for you!”

He’s all flushed and tousled. Crowley. I wish I had touched his hair, but I was sick with fear and couldn’t think properly. I still can’t think properly. I wish I knew what was going on.

I creep into an obscure seat by the bar and watch as they send Titania into the closet with Simon. She’s very pretty, if you’re into that young Natalie Portman look. Which everyone is.

It’s fine.

Seven minutes later, they emerge. Simon is grinning and wiping lipstick off his mouth.

I take a last drink of rum and ghost out of the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting. Trying to read some Hemingway to clear the palate before Wayward Son comes out...! Worried I won't remember what's canon and what's fan fiction when the time comes lol


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Texts! Pretty straightforward - BP is Baz, SS is Simon

**Simon**

If he thinks I’m not going to notice him slipping away, he’s underestimating my years of mistrusting him (“Stalking him,” says Penny. I’d like to see her not stalk her roommate if he was a devastatingly attractive, villainous vampire. I _have_ to follow him. For my safety. And to check if he’ll get home all right, because he seemed a bit unsteady on his feet.)

I catch him in the courtyard.

“Baz! Where are you going?”

“Why did you kiss me?”

I blink at him in surprise. It’s snowing lightly; the flakes are catching in his eyelashes.

“Baz, that’s the game. Seven Minutes in Heaven. You’re supposed to kiss people you wouldn’t normally.”

His expression is unreadable.

“Are you supposed to call me exquisite? Is that part of the game, too?”

“You were upset.”

He laughs up at the sky, but it doesn’t seem like he’s really laughing.

“You’re drunk,” I tell him.

“Liquid courage,” he says, and kisses me.

I kiss him back instinctively, but then remember that it’s Baz and break away.

“Stop. Baz.”

“I like you, Simon.”

It doesn’t make any sense.

“No, you don’t. We hate each other.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“You don’t hate me either,” he says. “We were both just confused.”

“I’m not confused,” I say, which is a lie. But we’re standing in the courtyard within sight of the Mage’s office and I’m the Chosen One and he’s the Pitch Heir and a _vampire_ and nothing he’s saying makes sense. “I hate you.”

“I’m not going to say it again, Simon: I love you.”

“I don’t understand what this plot is yet, Pitch, but I’m going to find out and foil it.”

He takes a step away from me. Something in his face seems to close, and I have an awful feeling it’s permanent.

“I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t.”

He turns away and walks to Mummer’s, still shaking his head.

**Baz **

It isn’t long until the holidays, anyway.

I’m done. I can’t. I just can’t. I told him I loved him; the last of my secrets, and he wouldn’t even believe it.

I can’t spend my life waiting for him to figure out his feelings.

**Simon**

I never thought there’d be something I’d hate more than Baz being mean to me, but it turns out I was wrong. Baz being polite is so much worse.

Something’s shifted between us, and he’s started treating me like we’re strangers sharing a train carriage.

“Do you mind if I close this?” he asks, hand on the window.

“Yes,” I snarl. He shrugs and leaves it. I close it myself half an hour later because I don’t want him to get cold.

When I mess up in class, he doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t help me, either. When I talk to him, he’s aggressively boring. I know he’s putting it on. I’ve heard him talk like this to his father.

“Yes, I’m well, thank you, how are you?” “The weather’s been good.” “I’m afraid I haven’t started that essay yet.”

I watch him smirk at Niall and Dev, and make snide remarks to Penny, and I feel so unbearably left out. I hadn’t realised that by teasing me, he was including me. That I _was_ something to him.

Once, I try to talk to him properly. But I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. He waits patiently for me to figure it out, but the moment I say the word “plotting”, he stands up.

“I can’t do this, Simon. I told you already.”

He keeps calling me Simon. Sometimes it feels like step forward. Most of the time it feels like the opposite. A symptom of his deadening good manners.

Then the Christmas holidays happen. I defeat the Humdrum. Penny and I accidentally kill the Mage. I lose most of my magic. I can’t return to Watford because I’m too depressed. Penny doesn’t either.

The war doesn’t happen.

February

**SS: Just bc the wars not happening doesnt mean I dont have my eye on you **

**SS: I’m serious **

**SS: Don’t try anything **

March 

**SS: I know ignoring me is part of your plot **

_BP: I can’t do this; I can’t play this game _

**SS: I’m sick of your cryptic fucking remarks**

**SS: You’re such a coward**

May 

**SS: I hope you fail your exams **

_BP: I won’t _

**SS: Penny would have beaten you you know**

_ BP: Are you okay? _

**SS: Trying to probe for weaknesses? **

June 

**SS: It’s rude not to answer a direct question, would’ve thought youd know that **

_BP: I’m not trying to probe you for weaknesses. And you didn’t answer my question. _

**SS: I’m fine **

_BP: I was sorry to hear about your magic _

**SS: I’ve still got the Sword of Mages. **

_BP: That’s good _

**SS: So don’t even think about it**

**SS: I hate not knowing where you are all the time **

**SS: Makes me so jumpy **

**SS: Like at least in our room I knew I was safe **

_BP: This is all in your head _

**SS: Stop gaslighting me **

_BP: You’re gaslighting yourself _

**SS: That’s really fucked up Baz **

**SS: You should be careful you know **

**SS: Because I have shit on you **

**SS: I know things about you that you wouldn’t want to get out **

**SS: Baz?**

** SS: I shouldn’t have said that **

**SS: That was really shitty **

**SS: I’m sorry **

**SS: Ahh none of these texts are delivering **

**SS: Did you block me? **

July

**SS: Baz I’m sorry **

**SS: I hope you can see these **

**SS: I keep calling but it just rings and rings **

September

**SS: Agatha says you didn’t read the letter I sent you **

**SS: Baz? **

**SS: Fuck **

November

** SS: I know you’ve blocked me so you can’t read any of these **

**SS: But I just **

**SS: nvm**

January 

**SS: Turns out I’m gay and that’s like, really recontextualising a lot of my memories **

**SS: I know you can’t read these **

**SS: I just, **

February

**SS: Your boyfriend seems really nice **

**SS: On instagram**

** SS: I haven’t met him**

** SS: But you look happy **

**SS: I hope you’re happy**

** SS: I miss you**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made some bold decisions here, hope you guys like it! Dw they WILL FIGURE IT OUT
> 
> Eventually


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RECONNECTING BUT NOW THEY'RE MORE MATURE

**Simon **

It’s been five years, but I recognise him instantly. My heart leaps as wildly as if I’m still eighteen. More, actually, because now I can correctly translate what it’s doing, and why.

I realised I was in love with him about a year after I left school. I had a one night stand with a guy, called him Baz by accident, and burst into tears when I came; it was a whole thing.

“Maybe Agatha can put you in contact,” suggested Penny.

When I brought Baz up to Agatha, however, she interrupted me.

“Oh, so you’ve heard about Heinrich!”

“Heinrich?”

She showed me Heinrich’s instagram. (I followed him right away. Baz doesn’t have an instagram. Or any social media.)

Heinrich von Ranke, handsome German nobleman. Comes from an ancient family of mages.

“Baz’s dad is delighted,” said Agatha. “The von Rankes are practically royalty!”

I scroll through the pictures. Baz, cocking an eyebrow at the camera, holding two cups of tea. Baz, trying to hide his face as he reads in the passenger seat of a car, his feet on the dashboard. Heinrich, pressing his lips to the side of Baz’s face as Baz pretends to be displeased. But he’s not. I can tell he’s not, because he used to make that face at me, sometimes.

Obviously, I become obsessed with Heinrich’s instagram account.

I pick up that Baz is doing a Classics degree. That he’s really good at it. That he’s happy. Happier than he ever was at Watford, anyway.

I start dating Finley, who treats me like shit. I think that’s probably why I pick him. It reminds me of Baz. Except with Baz, I fought back; it was an enmity of equals. And I think, really, that I always knew Baz loved me. Some part of me knew. That’s why he could call me an idiot all the time without me minding. He loved that I was an idiot. Finley just thinks I’m stupid.

We date for two and half years. Penny hates Finley all the way through, but I just shrug whenever she complains about him. I don’t really break up with people; they break up with me.

The pictures of Baz on Heinrich’s instagram change. He seems less happy and comfortable. They’re less about showing off how much Heinrich loves his boyfriend, and more about artistically cataloguing how much Baz contributes to the aesthetic of a place. Baz’s profile with a cigarette in his mouth (he only smokes when he feels bad about himself), framed in light. Baz passed out on a long embroidered couch, his pale throat arching back, ashy cigarette in hand. (It’s super dangerous for him to smoke like that; Heinrich should have taken the cigarette off him. But maybe Heinrich doesn’t know that Baz is flammable…?) Baz, standing silhouetted against the London skyline on a roof garden, scowling, his hands in his pockets, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I guess he can’t get lung cancer, but still.

Eventually, Baz stops showing up in the pictures at all.

I unfollow Heinrich when a new guy appears, uninteresting and bluntly attractive. A total downgrade. I wonder who broke up with who.

Finley breaks up with me after sex one night. I’m not surprised, really. It had been feeling like Agatha all over again, except worse. Sadder.

I’ve slept with a few people since Finley, casual hook ups. All it does is show me how much that’s not what I’m looking for.

“What _are_ you looking for?” asks Micah. (That’s a nice thing. I was so worried that Penny would move to America. It never occurred to me that Micah would move here. Penny says that was sexist of me.)

“I don’t know,” I answer. “Someone gorgeous, obviously. And fiercely independent, but, like, delicate? Someone I could take care of, but who would want to take care of me. Funny. And graceful. A mage, preferably, a really fucking good one. But like, less confident than he seems at first.”

Penny is looking at me pityingly. We both know why.

Because there’s only one Baz, and I fucked it up.

It’s not like I can’t function without him. I’m fine. I like social work, I’m good at it, and I love Penny and Micah. I’ll probably meet someone I like eventually. I’ll be all right if I don’t, though.

Still, when I see him at the pub, all my insides turn to rubber.

He’s leaning against the bar, talking to an impeccably dressed hot older guy, who looks kind of European. Baz looks older too. As if he used to only be a first draft, and now he’s finally the oil painting he was always meant to be.

The older guy brushes a strand of hair out of Baz’s eyes. Baz smiles and looks down as the older guy leans in to kiss him.

I tilt my head against the wall and groan.

“What’s wrong?” asks Penny.

“Baz is over there, snogging the Prince of Liechtenstein.”

“That’s not the Prince of Liechtenstein," says Penny. "That’s Antoine de Segur. He’s fabulously wealthy."

Micah peers over.

“And is that _the_ Baz?” He shakes his head. “Wow, you weren’t kidding, he’s super hot.”

“Of course he’s hot,” I snap.

“You should talk to him,” says Penny.

“I think he’s busy,” I say bitterly. Baz is smirking into Antoine’s mouth as he puts his hand on Baz’s thigh.

“Not right now, obviously. But in a bit.”

I knock my head on the table. Penny doesn’t stop me. She knows how angry I am at myself, still. At everything.

**Baz **

I see Simon around from time to time. I never let him see me. We both live in the same part of London, I think. I’ve darted away from him in supermarkets and curry shops and the tube.

I should really grow up. I’m sure he has.

I’m definitely over him, that’s not what this is about. I just don’t want… I don’t know, everything about Simon still hurts to think about.

Look, every queer kid has their Simon Snow. Teenage lesbians who fell in love with the girls who made out with them—but only at parties in front of boys. Teenage gay vampires who confessed their love to their Chosen One roommates only to be told that said Chosen One hated them and would have no qualms about getting them arrested as a dark creature.

It’s an age old story.

I’m at the pub with Antoine, a callous French duke I’m currently letting use me.

“Un autre?” he whispers into my ear. I smile instead of answering, and when I look up, Simon Snow is staring straight at me.

The smile slips off my face.

He’s not smiling either.

Then, he raises a tentative hand, and waves. It’s the most unbearably frightened gesture I’ve ever seen him make.

“Voila,” says Antoine, bringing me my cider.

“Merci,” I murmur, my eyes still fixed on Snow’s. He’s painfully handsome. Like, hit-you-over-the-head, just-move-to-Hollywood-already-and-star-in-superhero-movies handsome. It’s a bit much, actually.

_What the hell._ I let the corner of my mouth lift in a small smile.

The smile I get in return is comically huge. I can’t help but react. I shake my head, smiling down at my hands, and glance back at him.

He’s on his feet, coming towards me. _Shit_. I’m not—my hair isn’t even—and I’ve not been sleeping enough so I look—

And I can’t let Antoine get ahold of him because if they start sleeping together that’s it, I’m moving to Spain.

“Excuse-moi un moment,” I tell Antoine, letting him kiss the corner of my mouth as I slide out of his grasp.

And then I’m standing in front of Simon in the middle of a quiet London pub, with no idea what to say.

**Simon**

“Hey,” I say, breathlessly.

“Hey.”

“Um. D’you come here often?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Are you chatting me up, Snow?”

“Uh- no. I mean. That’s. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you, and yourself?”

“How’s the PhD?”

He looks taken aback that I know what he’s up to. But I know a lot about him, because I ask Agatha every time I see her, and she’s still with Dev.

“It’s good. Do you have a… job?”

So he hasn’t been asking Dev about me. I guess I’m not surprised.

“Yeah, social work, it’s really great.”

Baz looks quickly over his shoulder at Antoine, who’s watching him hungrily.

“Uh, I guess I should… let you get back to your boyfriend,” I say.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Oh?”

His face sharpens unpleasantly.

“You don’t have to love someone to kiss them, Snow. I’d have thought _you_ of all people would know that.”

“Uh, right,” I say. I’d forgotten how ferocious he was.

But he softens almost immediately.

“Sorry. That was rude of me,” he says.

“No, no, I get it.”

“Well, it was…surreal to see you, Snow.” He’s turning to go.

“Baz, wait. D’you, um, do you want to get coffee sometime? To catch up? Or, are you too busy? You’re probably too busy. But, um, it’s really good to see you, like _really_ good, and I feel like I have so much to tell you, but you’re definitely too busy, or like—”

“Yeah, all right,” he interrupts.

“Really?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Yeah, but like, you’re not just being polite?”

He scoffs.

“Of course I’m just being polite.”

I guess I must look crushed, because he rolls his eyes.

“God, I’d forgotten how bloody _sensitive_ you are.”

I grin, because this feels like the kind of mockery I’m used to, the kind I like.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Text me.”

“You’ll have to unblock me,” I say awkwardly. He makes a slightly sour expression.

“I unblocked you years ago, Snow,” he says, and returns to Antoine.

Years ago. _Years_. I haven’t texted since I first found out about Heinrich, of course. Then when they broke up, I was with Finley. By the time Finley broke up with me, it had been so long, and I had realised more fully how much I must have fucked with Baz’s head in 8th year (_Snowflakes trapped in his eyelashes. “I’m not going to say it again, Simon: I love you.”_), so I felt too ashamed to reach out to him. I didn’t want to stir up bad memories.

But I think—I don’t know.

Maybe he wouldn’t have minded.

**SS: Hey **

_BP: Is for horses _

**SS: You’re getting my texts!**

_BP: You’re spoiling my date. _

**SS: Sorry :) Just happy **

**SS: To see you **

**SS: You look good btw**

**SS: Uh, didn’t mean to make things weird already**

_BP: You’re always weird _

_BP: But don’t let that stop you from complimenting me _

**SS: Its so strange that youre texting back **

_BP: I’m being rude to my date and he already hates Gen Z so _

**SS: Lol fuck him were the best gen **

_BP: Agreed _

_BP: See you tomorrow, Snow _

**SS: Yeah! Ok**

**SS: Looking forward to it **

**SS: :)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are Baz and Simon Gen Z? I think they're on the cusp. Oh well
> 
> Not sure if anyone's going to be reading for the next few days what with THE ACTUAL BOOK COMING OUT Waaaahhh


	8. Chapter 8

**Baz**

I’ll admit to taking extra care dressing this morning. I check myself obsessively in mirrors all throughout the day. I keep rereading that text he sent: “You look good btw”

I’m over him, I remind myself. Over, over, over. I’m just meeting up with him for closure. It’s what 18-year-old me deserves. I am not getting involved in the Simon Snow Show again. That way lies madness.

We meet at a Cafe Nero because he has no class. He’s already there when I arrive. My stomach twists uncomfortably. He dresses really well now. Not how I would dress him (_what?)_, a bit more James Dean, or off-duty underwear model.

“Baz!” He waves me over. He’s already bought me a tea and made it exactly the way I like it, strong and milky, no sugar.

“Evening, Snow,” I say, sitting down. He’s grinning at me.

“It’s…shit,” he says. “Sorry. Wow. It’s, uh… You’re actually here.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“I didn’t think you’d show,” he clarifies.

“Well, I did. Now what?”

His smile drops. I find myself wanting to reach over and turn up the corners of his mouth with my fingers. I take a sip of my tea, instead.

“I…Look.” He’s running his hands nervously through his hair. “I don’t know how to say this properly. Because I don’t want to make it worse, and I don’t want to like… dredge up the past if that will make you uncomforta—”

“So don’t,” I say, coldly.

I understand now. He has a guilty conscience. He’d like a quick bit of forgiveness so he can go back to being the guileless hero. I’m not going to give it to him.

He blinks at me a few times.

“Right,” he says. “Yeah, okay.”

“Well, if that was all,” I say, pushing my chair out.

“Wait! Wait. Tell me about your PhD.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s Classics, right? What’s your dissertation about?”

I goggle at him.

“Snow, you don’t want to hear about my dissertation.”

“Latin or Greek?”

“Latin,” I answer. He’s found my weak spot. Every PhD student’s weak spot. None of us can resist talking about our dissertations. “Ovid. Specifically, Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation. So it’s sort of a Classics-English crossover.”

“Wicked. What’s so special about his translation?”

I relax back into my chair. What’s so special about Arthur Golding? Let me count the ways…

Some time later I realise that I’ve been monologuing for… a while. Snow listens intently, asking blithe but curious questions whenever it seems like I’ll stop.

No one ever asks me about this. I mean, I guess the kind of hook-ups I’ve been having don’t really lend themselves to conversation.

Heinrich used to ask about my degree from time to time, especially at first. But ultimately I don’t think he was interested when I strayed too far from his interpretation of me. He liked thinking that I was the Perfect English Gentleman, and so a bit of Classics was quite appropriate. Not too much, though.

“How long have I been talking?” I ask. Snow startles.

“Uh…” he looks at his phone. “Half an hour?”

“Crowley. Why did you let me go on like that? I must have bored you half to death!”

He flushes and starts messing around with the sugar packets on the table.

“Right, because I’m too thick to keep up with you.” It’s a typical Snow thing to say, but his delivery is all wrong. He doesn’t sound aggressive. He sounds like he _believes_ it.

“I wasn’t calling you thick, Snow.”

“Yeah, but you were thinking it.” Again, he doesn’t sound accusatory. Only resigned.

I’m not ready to admit that I don’t want to insult him, yet, so I don’t correct him.

“How about you, Snow? What have you been up to? Got Agatha Wellbelove 2.0 tucked away in a flat somewhere?”

He shakes his head.

“Nah. Single. I did have a serious boyfriend for a few years, though.”

_A boyfriend? Interesting. _

“What happened to him?”

“Ah, he broke up with me, probably for the best. ‘Bout six months ago.”

He looks so downtrodden.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, totally. Penny was thrilled. Everyone was, actually.”

“They didn’t like him? Why not?”

He shrugs. I don’t know what to say.

“Baz… I really am sorry about—”

“Drop it,” I snarl. He puts up his hands.

“Okay! Okay.” He frowns, then his face lights up. “Do you play FIFA?”

“Yes,” I say, thrown by this sudden change in subject.

“My flat’s nearby, wanna come and play a game?”

“Yeah, all right,” I say, before I’ve had a chance to think about it. Because if I thought about it, the idea of going to Simon’s flat when he’s just told me he’s single and heartbroken and _gay_ would very obviously be a bad one.

I’m glad I don’t think about it.

**Simon **

Baz beats me just as thoroughly at video games as he would at football.

“That was vicious, Baz.”

He smiles lazily at me. He looks great in my flat. I like him here. (Obviously.) (I’m in love with him.)

“Now that I’ve thoroughly flounced you, I’d best be on my way,” he says.

“You don’t want to play another?”

“No, I have a date.”

“Oh, right, cool, great, that’s great. Yeah. You should go. To your date. Great.”

“Are you having a stroke, Snow?”

“No, no, uh. No. Goodnight, then.”

Do we hug? Kiss on the cheek like Frenchmen? Handshake? Baz solves the problem by leaving without saying anything more than “Cheers, Snow.”

I wait until the next morning to text him.

**SS: Hope your date went well **

**SS: D’you want to play FIFA again tonight? **

He doesn’t answer for hours.

_BP: Bit keen_

_BP: We saw each other yesterday, remember? _

**SS: Shit**

**SS: Sorry **

**SS: I’m so annoying**

** SS: Used to piss Finley off no end**

_BP: Don’t be pathetic, Snow_

_BP: It takes all the fun out of bullying you if you’re pathetic _

**SS: Sorry**

_BP: …you know I don’t actually think you’re pathetic, yeah?_

**SS: Oh**

_BP: I have plans tonight_

_BP: You free tomorrow?_

**SS: Yeah!**

_BP: See you then_

**_SS: Yeah! See you_ **

**SS: :) **

**Baz**

My plans are with Dev and Agatha. We’re having dinner at their place. They’re sickeningly domestic.

“I saw Snow yesterday,” I announce, as Agatha puts the lasagna on the table.

Dev chokes on his wine, but Agatha keeps her composure.

“How nice,” she says.

They haven’t mentioned Snow in front of me in almost five years. I made it very clear, after I blocked him, that I didn’t want to hear his name.

“He mentioned a relationship,” I say.

Agatha’s face darkens.

“Finley,” she says.

“Not a fan?”

“No one liked Finley.”

“Did he…” I strain to keep something out of my voice. “…hurt Simon?”

I have to ask. I’ve never killed anyone, but there’s a first time for everything.

“God, no!” says Agatha. “No. He just didn’t really _like_ Simon. It was so strange. I think he sort of loved him, in his way, but he never said a single nice thing to him or about him. Right, Dev?”

Dev nods.

“It was like Snow picked the first person who bullied him like you did,” says Dev. “Only you were doing it because you fancied him. Finley was just a dick.”

I don’t know what to make of this. I take a very small bite of lasagna. If I eat tiny mouthfuls, my fangs don’t pop.

“Baz… Simon’s had a tough few years,” says Agatha. “Don’t…”

“Don’t what?”

“Get revenge,” says Dev.

“Why does everyone always assume I’m plotting things?”

“Because half the time you are, mate,” says Dev.

“Look,” says Agatha. “Simon lost most of his magic, accidentally killed his father, dropped out of school, realised he was gay, dated someone who made him feel like crap for almost three years, and then got his heart broken. I just don’t want you to lead him on.”

“Like _he_ led _me_ on, you mean?”

“You could handle it, Baz. Simon can’t.”

I fold my napkin and put it on the table.

“I’m not surprised he’s so miserable, if all his friends treat him like he’s a washed-up has-been,” I say. “He’s Simon fucking Snow. He’s brave and brilliant and more determined than anyone else living. There’s _nothing_ he can’t handle.”

Agatha and Dev stare at me.

“Okay then,” says Dev.

**Simon **

Baz starts coming over a couple of times a week to play video games. I ask him about his course, he asks me about my work. He gets on with Penny and Micah. Sometimes he comes to the pub with us. He knows his way around my kitchen.

We never touch each other.

It’s always my flat, never his, although I know he lives nearby.

“Simon,” says Penny. “Are you sure it’s good for you to be friends with Baz?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re never going to meet someone else if you’re still hung up on him.”

“Yeah, but I’m never _not_ going to be hung up on him, am I?”

He goes on about four dates a week. I get very quiet when he brings them up. I wonder if this is what it was like for him when I was dating Agatha in school— although I don’t think he liked me back then. I think he only liked me after Dev and Agatha Much Ado About Nothinged us.

It’s painful, when he breezes out of my flat, _“I’m meeting someone, can’t stay.”_

But it’s really really nice to have him as a friend.

**SS: How did your meeting with your supervisor go?**

_BP: Awful. He’s such a git. _

_**SS: Want me to sword him?** _

_BP: I can slaughter my own enemies, thanks._

**SS: lol no you can’t**

**SS: Youve never killed anything in your life**

_BP: …I beg to differ._

**SS: Pest control doesn’t count**

**SS: Admit it, youre basically a Quaker**

**SS: A pacifist**

**SS: Youre like the antidote to violence **

_BP: That’s not what you used to think._

**SS: Yeh well I used to be a twat so**

_BP: That you were._

**SS: I’m really sorry, Baz**

_BP: Don’t_

**SS: ok **

**SS: I can still sword your supervisor if you like**

**SS: Just say the word**

_BP: “Sword” isn’t a verb_

**SS: I’ll sword him right through the head**

_BP: You’re an idiot_

**SS: Sword him to death**

**SS: Until he appreciates you**

_BP: This is your way of showing affection, isn’t it_

**_SS: Yeah_ **

**_SS: Lot of restraining orders out against me_ **

**_SS: Bc I’ve got so much love to give_ **

_BP: Free later for take-out and Die Hard?_

**SS: Yep**

_BP: See you then _

**SS: :)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have your copies of Wayward Son arrived?? Mine hasn't. Also I promised myself I would finish A Farewell to Arms first. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting, it makes it so much easier to write!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mainly texts! I know this fic is like... changing genre all over the place.

**Baz**

It’s all becoming a bit hard to justify. Why I’m spending so much time with him when I’m over him, _definitely over him._ So over him that I’ve been sleeping with about double the normal number of people to try and clear him out of my system. (It isn’t working.)

He keeps trying to apologise, and I keep shutting him down, because once he stops feeling guilty he’s going to stop spending time with me.

I’m not looking too hard at why that makes me feel so awful.

There are some boundaries, though. I don’t text him at night. I don’t let him come over to mine. I rarely text him first.

I come home from Edouard’s feeling sadder and more frazzled than usual. I drink some blood without even bothering to heat it up. It’s late, but I don’t feel like sleeping. My phone is heavy in my pocket. It’s almost three in the morning. Simon’s definitely asleep. And even if he isn’t, I can’t just text him in the middle of the night. I can’t. I mustn’t.

Simon’s always made an idiot out of me.

_BP: Are you awake?_

**SS: Yeah!**

**SS: How was your date?**

_BP: Fine_

**SS: yeah? **

_BP: Same as always _

_BP: Sex is sex_

**SS: 0_0**

_BP: Sorry Snow, didn’t mean to offend your finer sensibilities_

**SS: no no **

**SS: not offended **

**SS: I’m just not like **

**SS: I can’t be casual about sex **

**SS: I wish I could, I admire that about you **

**SS: sorry that was a weird thing to say **

_BP: I’m not casual about sex_

**SS: Yeah sorry I’m not like **

**SS: implying all your hook-ups are meaningless **

**SS: uh **

**SS: Just that when I’ve had meaningless hook-ups I feel like shit after **

This is a whole lot more Simon-Snow-telling-me-about-how-he-has-sex than I had anticipated. I’m staring at the phone in shock.

**SS: Sorry have I said something stupid **

**SS: Ahh **

**SS: I’m always saying the wrong thing **

_BP: No, you’re not_

_BP: Actually you’re right_

_BP: Meaningless hook-ups make me feel like shit too_

**SS: …**

_BP: They’re just easier though, aren’t they _

_BP: Than being alone _

What the fuck did I just write? I haven’t even been drinking. It’s like I’m a teenager again. It’s as if Simon pulls my heart out through my my fingertips.

He’s always done that.

**SS: But like **

**SS: You could get anyone you wanted Baz **

**SS: Anyone would want to be your bf **

_BP: lol get off my dick Snow_

**SS: Shit sorry not trying to be weird**

_BP: Stop apologising _

_BP: Trust me, I’ll make it clear if/when you offend me _

_BP: And I know I could get a boyfriend _

It would be easy for me. My dad’s practically lining up eligible bachelors.

But it was sort of awful, being with Heinrich. It was so hard to hide the whole vampire thing. (He thought I was cheating on him, in the end. I wasn’t.) And it’s not like I can just tell people.

I tried that once already, didn’t I?

I know Simon would never actually have sold me out. It took me a while to know that; about a year after I blocked him. I did eventually realise it; that he had just been angry and cruel without intending me any real harm. That’s when I unblocked him. Not that he ever tried to get in touch.

But Simon is the most benevolent person I’ve ever met. If _he_ used it against me when he was angry, imagine what normal people would do?

Anyway, shame isn’t exactly sexy. So I just keep it under wraps. No big deal.

I’ve spaced out, which always makes Simon blow up my phone.

**SS: Yeh of course **

**SS: lol **

**SS: I’m not like **

**SS: trying to give you advice **

**SS: my love life’s a shambles **

**SS: Penny keeps sending me on blind dates **

**SS: like it’s the 90s **

**SS: I’ve tried telling her about Tindr **

**SS: Anyway **

**SS: yeh **

**SS: just rambling now **

**SS: you prob dont even like **

**SS: want a bf **

**SS: not really your style **

_BP: Why isn’t it my style?_

**SS: cos your a cat**

_BP: Surprisingly, that answers my question _

_BP: What are you even doing up this late? _

**SS: Watching Jurassic Park **

_BP: … _

**SS: Jeff Goldblum **

_BP: Say no more_

**SS: They’ve just arrived at the island**

_BP: Wait I’m downloading it_

**SS: They’ve spared no expense**

_BP: Stop quoting obscure lines at me and tell me which bit precisely_

**SS: Ok so**

_BP: Hang on_

_ BP: I’m calling you _

After that the seal is broken. We start texting at night. Most nights. Whenever I get back from my dates.

Sometimes I don’t even bother having sex with my date before going home and texting Snow.

We watch movies together on the phone, which is stupid because we live so close. We could obviously watch them together. But I don’t suggest it, and neither does he.

“I used to wonder what Brad Pitt’s dick would look like,” says Snow on the phone.

We’re watching Troy. It’s basically just porn with some fighting, and I’m feeling extremely on edge.

“Seriously, Snow, how did you not realise you were gay earlier?”

He doesn’t answer for a long time. Orlando Bloom is making some sort of speech.

“Honestly… I think I was never going to figure it out until I’d defeated the humdrum,” says Simon.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… I was just… pretty worried about doing what I was supposed to do. Like…” I can hear him rustling around on his sofa. It feels so intimate, like I’m resting my head on his shoulder. “…I had this whole hero narrative in my head, you know? With Penny as the side kick and Agatha as The Girl…”

“…and me as the nemesis…”

“Yeah, look, it was messed up, I know. It messed _me_ up. And you. And I wish you would just let me say sorr—”

I hang up.

I don't want to hear it. I don't want him to get this off his chest. For him to get the cathartic release he's looking for.

I don't want him to get back to his life without me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Lmk what you think in the comments if you want I know this is maybe more slow burn than the premise suggested it would beeee


	10. Chapter 10

**Baz**

I bury my head in the sofa cushions.

My phone vibrates.

**SS: Well that was dramatic **

_BP: Can we go back to talking about Brad Pitt’s dick please_

**SS: Not a sentence I ever thought I’d hear you say**

**SS: But sure**

**Simon **

Baz takes me to the cast gallery at the V&A. I’d have liked it anyway, because the statues are beautiful, but he knows all the myths, and tells me funny anecdotes about the Renaissance sculptors. I feel faint with laughter as he tells me about Queen Victoria’s opinions on Michelangelo’s David.

_How does he do this to me?_

I lean my head into his shoulder to catch my breath. He goes all stiff, so I lean away, feeling dreadful.

We’re at the zoo, looking at marmots.

“Huh,” says Baz. “So technically they’re a type of squirrel.”

“Baz, can I ask you a personal question that you’ll hate?”

He rolls his eyes.

“No.”

“Okay.” I go back to reading the plaque about marmot eating habits. He pushes my shoulder.

“I’m not used to you giving in so easily,” he says.

I shrug.

“Don’t want to annoy you.”

“People like you _because_ you’re annoying, Snow. Go on, ask your nosy fucking question.”

“Is you going to a zoo kind of like me going to a buffet and not being allowed to eat anything?”

He looks at me and then bursts out laughing. I’m not sure what I expected, but not this.

Only then he keeps on laughing, laughing and laughing as if he can’t control himself, and it sounds like it’s tipping into something else, and people are staring at him.

I steer us out of the mammal enclosure to a little park bench. He laughs and laughs until he can’t seem to breath, then he stops.

I don’t know what to say.

“You’re the only person outside my immediate family who knows what I am,” he says. “And you ask the stupidest fucking questions!”

I don’t mention that Penny knows too because I’m stuck on something else.

“But, Baz… you were with Heinrich for _years_!”

“And?”

“You didn’t tell him?”

He shakes his head.

“Baz… Baz, did you not tell him because of me?”

“Not everything revolves around you, Snow.”

“You told me—”

“I _didn’t_ tell you. You ripped my hand away from my mouth. You _made_ me show you.”

“Yeah, okay, that was shitty too. And then when I texted you those things, I just threw it back in your face.”

“What do you want from me, Snow? Absolution? For me to forgive you so you can stop bothering about me?”

He sounds tired. I have so many thoughts scrambling to get out that I don’t even know which one to follow. I’m staring at his long, elegant hand on his knee.

“Can I hold your hand?” I ask.

His hands clasp together, away from me.

“No!”

I guess that makes sense. I just thought I might be able to explain myself better physically than with words. But words will have to do.

“I don’t care if you forgive me, Baz.”

He makes a small noise of disbelief.

“I mean, obviously, of course I’d rather you did. But that’s not why I want to say sorry.”

I wait for him to interrupt me, but he doesn’t. A little girl walks by us, licking an ice cream.

“You showed me who you were, and I continued to treat you as if you were evil and frightening. And I’m apologising because I don’t want the fact that I was a total muppet when I was eighteen to fuck up the rest of your life. You should be able to open up to people. Anyone would be _honoured_ to know your secrets.”

He unclasps his hands and holds one out to me. I take it in both mine, hold it like I’m pressing all my love into it. Then I release it, and trace all around the outline of his fingers with my index. He spreads his hand so I can do it. His nails are short and neat. He has one or two calluses, and a few slender blue veins. 

I’ve never really stopped to appreciate how amazing hands are in general, and Baz’s hand in particular.

When I’ve touched every inch of it, I carry his hand up to my mouth and look at him.

I haven’t looked at his face this whole time. His eyes are guarded, but he nods.

I bend my head over him and kiss each of his knuckles in turn.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” I whisper. “I don’t care. I just want you to be happy.”

He leans into me and touches his lips to the back of my head.

“I forgave you ages ago. Ages and ages.”

I look up at him, smiling, and our faces are so close. I could just kiss him. He could just kiss me. I love him I love him I love him—

He stands.

“I’d better go home and change, I’m seeing Antoine tonight.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

My insides twinge with that unique pain that no one but Baz has ever made me feel. I think it’s the ache of hope and disappointment clashing together.

We walk out of the zoo as if nothing has changed. He’s telling me about something stupid one of his students said in class. When we get to the tube, he knocks my shoulder gently.

“Friends is good for us, don’t you think? We make good friends.”

I know I haven’t been able to hide my dismay. I know he can see on my face how devastated I am.

“Yeah, friends is great. Absolutely,” I say.

“Good. That’s settled, then.”

“Yeah. Enjoy your date.”

“I will.”

I laugh a little brokenly, and he strides away.

**Baz **

Antoine and I have lacklustre sex and then lie in bed smoking cigarettes like cliches.

“I think I’m in love,” I say.

His eyes widen with horror.

“Not with _you_,” I add.

“You mustn’t scare me like that, cheri!”

“Sorry.”

We’re silent for a moment.

“Does he love you back?” he asks.

“I think so.”

“Alors qu’est-ce que tu fait avec moi?”

“Because I don’t _want_ to be in love with him.”

I did that already. It was so, so hard for me to reveal myself to him, and so, so easy for him to shut me down. He’s fickle and changeable. I don’t think he loves the same way I do; painfully, for years.

Antoine hasn’t said anything.

“It took me years to get over him, last time. And honestly, I don’t know that I ever did.”

“You and I, we have fun,” says Antoine. “I don’t hurt you, and you don’t hurt me.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“So the question is: how will _he_ be if you don’t act?”

I laugh. That’s easy.

“Oh, he’ll be much better off without me.”

Although, I remember what Dev said. _“It was like he picked the first person who bullied him like you did.”_ I think of the way Simon keeps apologising, the way he seems terrified of losing people if he is too much himself.

I stub out my cigarette.

“Can I stay the night?”

“You’re pushing your luck, cheri.”

“I’m worried I’ll throw myself at his feet if I leave here.”

“Maybe that’s okay,” says Antoine.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Oh, all right, Romeo. But no cuddling.”

“I wasn’t going to _cuddle_ you.”

I was completely going to cuddle him. I want to be held so badly it’s driving me mad.

No one’s ever touched me as reverently as Simon does, as if I’m something priceless.

**Simon **

Penny lets me cry into her lap. She doesn’t even say “I told you so.”

“Maybe this is a good thing,” she says. “Now you know what he wants. No more wondering.”

“Yeah,” I say, picking up my phone.

“Don’t text him!”

“We always text after his dates.”

“Yeah, and that’s weird.”

So I wait until she’s gone to bed to text him. (Finley used to say I was pathetic. I get why.)

**SS: Hey! How did your date go **

**SS: I think it’s your turn to pick the movie**

** SS: Pls dont pick something 3 hours long like last time with Spartacus **

He doesn’t answer. I should go to bed, but I burn my eyes out on the internet, waiting for him.

** SS: good date lol **

It’s almost five before I give up.

**SS: prob going to go to bed now **

**SS: uh **

**SS: about today **

**SS: I **

**SS: ah, fuck, im just tired, ignore me **

When I wake up the next morning, there’s one text from him.

_BP: Did you ever text me after I blocked you_

I scrabble to reply.

**SS: Hi! **

**SS: Morning **

**SS: Yes **

**SS: loads **

Three bubbles appear, then disappear, then appear again.

_BP: Can I see them? _

They’re still there, on my phone. My heart’s beating in my ears as I scroll back, back through time, back to when I lost him, and take screenshots.

June the year I left school

**SS: I hate not knowing where you are all the time **

**SS: Makes me so jumpy **

**SS: Like at least in our room I knew I was safe **

_BP: This is all in your head_

**SS: Stop gaslighting me **

_BP: You’re gaslighting yourself_

**SS: That’s really fucked up Baz **

**SS: You should be careful you know **

**SS: Because I have shit on you **

**SS: I know things about you that you wouldn’t want to get out **

**SS: Baz? **

**SS: I shouldn’t have said that**

** SS: That was really shitty **

**SS: I’m sorry **

**SS: Ahh none of these texts are delivering **

**SS: Did you block me?**

July 

**SS: Baz I’m sorry**

** SS: I hope you can see these **

**SS: I keep calling but it just rings and rings**

September 

**SS: Agatha says you didn’t read the letter I sent you **

**SS: Baz? **

**SS: Fuck **

November 

**SS: I know you’ve blocked me so you can’t read any of these **

**SS: But I just **

**SS: nvm**

January

** SS: Turns out I’m gay and that’s like, really recontextualising a lot of my memories **

**SS: I know you can’t read these**

** SS: I just,**

February 

**SS: Your boyfriend seems really nice **

**SS: On instagram **

**SS: I haven’t met him **

**SS: But you look happy **

**SS: I hope you’re happy **

**SS: I miss you **

He doesn’t answer for a long, long time.

Then my phone rings.

“Hey,” I say.

“You apologised so fast,” he says.

“Um.”

“Like within a minute.”

“Yeah. Penny asked me a question, I answered, and when I looked back at my phone I realised what I’d done.”

“What did you keep trying to tell me?”

“Oh. Uh. That I was in love with you.”

“Oh,” says Baz.

“Yeah.”

I feel like I can hear him thinking on the phone.

“Um, Baz, like…”

“Wait. So what were you trying to tell me last night?”

“Don’t… don’t humiliate me, Baz. I know you just want to be friends.”

He takes a deep breath, and I think for a moment he’s going to tell me that’s wrong, that he doesn’t want to be friends, that he loves me.

But he doesn’t.

“Come over tonight and watch a movie with me,” he says.

“At yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he says, and he sounds relieved. I don’t know why. I feel like drowning myself in a lake. “Okay,” he says again. I hear another man’s voice in the background. “I have to go. See you tonight.”

He hangs up.

I thought Baz never slept over. I guess the date must have gone really fucking well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're getting closer and closer!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be warned, there is some light sexual content herein!

**Simon**

His apartment is enormous, all clean lines and minimalist furniture.

Penny gave me a lot of shit for coming over at all.

_“You need distance, Simon. He needs to let you get over him.” _

Baz looks handsomer than I’ve ever seen him. Maybe that’s a forbidden fruit thing, though. Although to be honest, Baz has always been forbidden fruit. That’s kind of his vibe:_ Eat me and you’ll die._

“Why have we been spending so much time at my flat when you live in a palace?” I ask.

“I like being able to leave places.”

“You’re like a parody of emotional unavailability.”

“Fucking hell, Snow, your guns are loaded.”

“Sorry.”

“Sit down and shut up. We’re watching James Bond. Brosnan era.”

“I’m not watching anything till I’ve been fed.”

It’s so easy talking to him, being with him, even when my heart’s in turmoil because of him. The easier it is to spend time together, the more it hurts that this is all he wants.

“You’d die first in a siege,” he says.

Turns out he’s cooked. Turns out he’s really fucking good at cooking. Why am I not surprised.

I can’t get comfortable on his fancy grey sofa when we start the movie. I keep shifting. It’s not a big sofa, either, and I’m hyper aware of how close he is at all times.

“You’re like a bloody two-year-old, Snow.”

“The person who designed your sofa had clearly never tried sitting on one!”

“It’s mid-century modern. Stop whingeing,” he says, and… and he puts his arm around me and drags me into his chest.

It’s a little more comfortable. I try to relax. His eyes are glued to the screen, so I keep mine forward, even as his hand slowly, slowly begins moving on my shoulder. Nothing untoward, he just brushes back and forth on my t-shirt sleeve.

It’s distracting.

I shift a few more times, and he smoothly scoops my legs up and puts them over his, wrapping his arms around me.

He still hasn’t taken his eyes off the tv. His hand is moving up and down on my back, going lower each time. I have to turn my head at a weird angle to see the screen, so I give up, and rest my face into his neck.

He swallows against my nose.

He moves so slowly. It takes twenty minutes before his fingers reach the bottom of my t-shirt and glide under it.

I’m trying to keep my breathing normal. He said we’re just friends. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I don’t want him to remember that he said that.

We’re over halfway through the movie (I’ve never concentrated on dialogue less) when he tilts his face down towards me.

I tilt mine up.

His eyes flicker to my lips.

Then suddenly he hoists me so that I’m straddling him— he does it so quickly and gracefully that I’m not even sure how it happened. He’s looking up at me. I have no idea what he’s thinking. I have to say something. This is all getting out of control.

“James Bond is like English Batman,” is what comes out of my mouth.

He looks just as shocked by this statement as I am.

“Crowley, you’re an idiot,” he says. His eyes are burning up with something. “You’re such… fuck. You’re _such_ an idiot.”

And then he pulls our faces together and kisses me. Hard. Angrily. Like fighting, but also like I matter enough to fight.

I come up for air.

“Because Batman represents American individualism,” I say, for reasons unknown to me.

“Shut up,” he hisses.

“Whereas Bond gets his money from the government. So like, he represents, I dunno, the NHS.”

“Shut up, shut _up_!”

Both his hands go under my shirt and press flat into my skin, tugging me closer as he brings his mouth to mine. He pushes up on my t-shirt, pulls it over my head, finding my mouth again the moment my shirt is off. His hands go everywhere, roaming all over me. Mine stay in his hair. It’s just as silky as I remembered. I missed him. I missed this.

I can feel his hard-on pressing into my leg. He can probably feel mine. His hands go to my belt and start fumbling.

“Baz.”

“What?”

“Baz, I told you. Casual sex makes me feel like shit.”

He breathes in sharply.

Thing is, I’ll still do it. I just want him to know that it will complicate things, for me.

“What if I told you it wasn’t casual?” he says.

“Baz, you said— you _said_ you just wanted us to be friends.”

“I want to kiss you. I want to take you into my bed and fuck you, where I’ve only ever slept alone.”

He doesn’t know what this is doing to me. He can’t. I’m shaking my head against his.

“You can do what you want to me,” I say. “But…but it’s going to make me feel like shit.”

His cool fingers thread themselves through my hair.

“Can I ask you a personal question that you’ll hate?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Are you in love with me?”

I feel like crying. I _am_ crying, fuck, only a bit though. It hurts, how much the tears have been building up behind my eyes.

“You _said_ you just wanted us to be friends,” I repeat.

“I _want_ you to tell me if you’re in love with me,” he growls.

“Of course I’m in love with you.”

He makes a low sound and pulls my face back to his. I’m crying as he kisses me.

“Why are you crying?” he asks.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t say you’re sorry; tell me why.”

“Because I don’t know what’s going on. But that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. You can have whatever you want, Baz. Friends with benefits or whatever, I don’t care… God I’m so pathetic… But I don’t care, you can have it all, I don’t—”

“Don’t you fucking dare call yourself pathetic.”

He’s holding my face in his hands, looking at me so intently that I think I’m going to shrivel up.

“You _said_ you just wanted us to be friends,” I say, once more.

His eyes are jumping between mine. He’s thinking something. I don’t know what. All I can think about is the fact that tomorrow night I’m going to remember this and feel his absence like a wound.

“In eighth year,” he says. “After Dev’s party.”

“Yes.”

“After that stupid fucking game.”

“Yes, I remember.”

Of course I remember. With the snow, and tipsy, eighteen-year-old Baz leaning forward to kiss me, and flakes of ice trapped in his long, curved eyelashes.

“I said I’d only say it once.”

What does he mean? Why won’t he say what he _means_?

“Please,” I say.

“I love you, Simon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! Basically just an epilogue. Again, some sexual references but only about the level of the last chapter

**Baz**

I meant it when I said I wanted to fuck him, but it becomes quickly apparent that he’s not ready for that tonight. (I don’t know if _I’m_ ready for that tonight. I feel all shaken and empty, as if I’ve just thrown up.)

When I tell him I love him, he curls into me and weeps. I think it’s with relief. I’m laughing a lot, and that’s _definitely_ relief.

“Hey,” I whisper into his hair. “Darling, Simon, my love…”

“I don’t…” he sobs. “I don’t even _like_ James Bond!”

“You’re entitled to your incorrect opinion,” I say, soothingly, as I kiss every part of him I can reach.

“There aren’t any _stakes_ because everything always just works out for him…!”

It’s a little hard to understand him through his tears. I don’t think it matters though. I don’t think the words are important. What’s important is that I hold him and keep holding him.

I’m smiling like I'm Miss America. It feels weird to be grinning like a maniac while Simon weeps shirtlessly onto my shoulder, but there you go. This is what we’ve come to.

“Do you have somewhere to be?” he asks, when his sobs have lessened.

I laugh.

“What, like a date?”

He nods.

“I think that would be pretty rude to my _current_ date, don’t you?”

He looks up at me appealingly with his big blue eyes, all watery and emotional.

“Baz…”

“Yes, darling?”

“Did you… did you get anything for dessert?”

I laugh again and squeeze him until he squeaks.

“Fucking hell I love you,” I say. “Yes. I have cream cakes in the fridge.”

When I release him, he’s all lit up with happiness. I don’t know if it’s because I told him I loved him again, or because of the cakes. Probably the cakes.

He puts on his t-shirt before eating, which I try not to read into. (Maybe he’s not sexually attracted to me? He was hard, though, right? I didn’t imagine that?)

“Why didn’t you tell me this was a date?” he asks, licking cream off his knife like an animal.

“I wasn’t sure it was.”

“I don’t really get what changed. Yesterday you were all, _Excuse me, I’m off to fuck a Frenchman_.”

I squint at him.

“Is that what I sound like?”

“Yeah, I’m an amazing mimic.”

“I think it was the text messages.”

“What do you mean?” He takes another cream cake. I thought I’d have enough for tomorrow, but never mind.

I spent so long pining for him, and then when he seemed interested back, it was so fleeting and unsustained. I thought he just _couldn’t_ love me the way I loved him.

But when he told me that he’d tried to confess he was in love with me—_four years ago_—and when I began to suspect that he was _still_ in love with me…

Well, I related to that.

“Just, it was reassuring to think I wasn’t, you know. The flavour of the day,” I summarise. No need to go into my crushing insecurities just now. They’re not exactly attractive.

He looks soulfully into my eyes.

“These cream cakes are delicious.”

_Don’t tell him you love him. You’ve already done that. Twice._

“Of course they are. They’re expensive.”

“Oh,” says Simon, dropping the cake back on the plate. “Should I…”

“Heaven above, Snow, eat them!”

“Okay,” he says, smiling again. I take a fork and dip the tines into the cream, licking it off slowly so that my fangs won’t pop.

Simon gulps.

“Uh, Baz. What you said… about, about your bed…”

I put the fork down.

“I didn’t mean tonight, necessarily.”

“Are you sure? Because we can if you want…?”

“Simon, I’ve wanted to sleep with you for literally ten years. I think I can hang on a bit longer.”

He blushes at that. I would blush too if I could. I’m failing miserably at this whole _playing it cool_ thing.

“Lol,” he says.

“Did you just… _say_ ‘lol’? Out loud?”

“Yeah, it’s late, all right! I’m tired!”

I laugh at him. I can’t seem to control myself. I feel giddy.

“I should probably go,” he says.

That sobers me up. Did I think he’d want to sleep over? Stare into my eyes and call me exquisite in the dark, like he did once five years ago?_ Grow up, Baz._

“I’ll walk you home,” I say.

“But then you’ll have to walk back alone.”

“Yeah, and if anyone tries to mess with me I’ll fucking eat them. Come on, get your stuff.”

He threads his arm through mine when we get outside. It’s, well. I like it. I like it a lot.

The walk to his is over too soon. I lean against his front door and hope for a kiss.

Instead, he presses his nose against my cheek.

“D’you want to stay over? Like, just to sleep?”

_Oh_.

“That’s stupid, Snow, why didn’t we just stay at mine?”

“I know you like being able to leave places. I didn’t want to be invasive.”

“Call me first century Britain, because I’m ripe for the invasion.”

He grins into my neck.

“I love you, Baz, but that was awful.”

His words send thrills all up and down my spine.

“Sure, Snow. I’ll sleep over.”

It’s surreal getting ready for bed with him. He gives me some clothes to change into, and I always carry disposable toothbrushes with me. (Sleeping around is all fine and good, but dental hygiene is _important_.)

We climb into his bed, and he flicks off the lights.

“It’s bloody cold in here, Snow.”

“I’ll warm you up; come here.”

I fall asleep curled into him, breathing in his fiery smell, letting his curls tickle my nose. I’ve never been warmer or more content in my entire life.

When I wake up, he’s still fast asleep.

I’m pretty sure I look like shit. My hair’s probably greasy. There’s no way in hell I’m letting him see me like this. I know that being handsome and put-together is kind of my _main thing_, and I don’t want him to realise it’s all a sham.

I extricate myself from the bed and sneak back to my flat to shower.

**Simon**

Of course he’s gone when I wake up. Of course of course of course. He’s slipped away like a morning mist and he’s probably going to pretend none of it ever happened.

“How did it go last night?” asks Penny, as I mope in the kitchen.

I shrug.

“I told you you shouldn’t have gone,” she says. “He needs to give you some space.”

Someone knocks on the door. I slump out of the kitchen to get it.

It’s Baz, looking impeccable as always, hair shiny and perfect, clothes all ironed and shit. He’s holding two coffees and a Waitrose bag. I didn’t even know there was a Waitrose near us.

“Morning,” he says.

“Where did you go?”

“I had to shower.”

“We have a shower here, you know.”

He rolls his eyes.

“Simon, I’m not using your fucking Herbal Essences shampoo; it has sulfates.”

“Baz?” It’s Penny. She emerges from the kitchen, looking suspicious. “What are you doing here?”

“Making omelettes. Want one?”

He pushes past her into the kitchen and begins unloading groceries.

“No, thanks,” she says. She’s glaring at _me_ now. “This is bright and early for a visit.”

“How do you feel about parsley, Snow?”

I make a face.

“You’re such a child.”

“Why are you in my flat at 8 a.m. making eggs?” asks Penny.

“Because Snow needs protein. Has the prosecution any further questions?”

Penny glowers but doesn’t say anything else.

I hover near him while he makes the omelette, hoping he’ll kiss me, but he doesn’t. He’s very focused.

The omelette is accordingly delicious.

“I have to go to work,” I say regretfully, when I’m done.

“I’ll walk out with you,” he says.

But as we’re at the door, Penny catches him by the elbow.

“Can I have a word, Basilton?”

He looks a little alarmed.

“Sure, Bunce. See you later, Snow.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. We haven’t kissed all morning. I love Penny, but I love kissing Baz, and I hope I won’t have to choose between the two. I know what would win.

**Baz**

Simon leaves without kissing me. I guess he’s not ready to tell Penny about us yet. Fine fine fine.

“What are you doing?” hisses Bunce.

“Trying to go to a tutorial. What are _you_ doing?”

“You’re not being fair to Simon. You need to give him space. You need to let him get over you.”

I look her dead in the eye.

“I’m _never_ going to let him get over me,” I say, and sweep out of the flat.

**SS: What did Penny want?**

_BP: For me to leave you alone_

**SS: Omg **

**SS: Please don’t**

_ BP: I thought she’d like me more than Finley, at least_

**SS: Well **

**SS: She thinks you’re not into me **

_BP: So you reckon she’ll chill out when she knows we’re dating?_

**SS: We’re dating?**

_BP: … _

_BP: …I assumed so…? _

_BP: Although maybe I’m a fucking idiot and should go jump off a bridge? _

**SS: No no no no n **

**SS: No**

**SS: No I want that **

**SS: I just wasn’t sure if YOU would want that **

_BP: I do. _

**SS: Just to check **

**SS: and its fine either way **

**SS: like I’m so chill either way **

**SS: Whatever you want, but **

_BP: come on Snow _

**SS: When you say date **

**SS: do you mean, like exclusively? **

**SS: cos like if you’re not ready for that I **

_BP: yes I mean exclusively you moron _

**SS: ahhh **

_BP: I thought _

_BP: since we’re in love with each other and all _

_BP: it might be quite nice if we could be _

_BP: I don’t know _

**SS: Boyfriends? **

_BP: Yes._

_BP: What do you say?_

**SS: You have no idea how much I’m smiling rn**

**SS: I look completely deranged**

_BP: Is that a yes_

**SS: Yes **

**SS: Baz? **

**SS: You there? **

_BP: Yes sorry _

_BP: That’s just _

_BP: Good news _

**SS: I have to work **

**SS: I have to tell some orphans that It Will Get Better **

_BP: Go save the world, darling _

**SS: I love you so much Baz **

**Simon **

He arrives at my flat ten minutes after I get home from work, laden with yet more grocery bags. I don’t even let him put them down before I pin him against the fridge and kiss him. He’s holding too many bags to put his arms around me. I take advantage of this and run my hands up and down his sides.

He moans into my mouth. Fucking _moans_.

I press myself into his body because I want him to know how much I want him, and he breathes in sharply.

“Snow… Snow, at least let me make you dinner first.”

“When I was a kid, do you know what I used to think?”

I’m slipping my fingers through the gaps between his buttons.

“Something child-appropriate, I hope?”

I put my hand on the hard lump in his jeans. He makes a small, high-pitched sound.

“I used to think, _when I grow up, I’m going to have dessert before dinner_.”

“If this is about those bloody cream cakes—”

“I want to suck your dick for dessert, Baz.”

“Fucking hell,” he breathes.

The front door opens, and he tries to squirm away from me. I keep him right where he is.

I crush my mouth into his as Penny walks into the kitchen.

I hear her stop in her tracks.

“Okay, seriously, what the hell is going on?”

Baz bites my lip, then pulls away. He looks at me unflinchingly.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just making risotto for my boyfriend.” He glances over at Penny. “Would you like some?”

**Baz **

Simon calls me handsome even when I’m tired

And he doesn’t care that I’m a vampire

And he likes hearing me talk about Ovid

And he’s so warm at night

And he thinks everything I cook is delicious

And he always introduces me as his boyfriend

And sometimes, at night, when he thinks I’m asleep, he curls strands of my hair around his fingers, and says, very very quietly

_“I’ve always loved you, Baz”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it that's the fic! I did not expect it to turn into a sprawling 20,000 word tale of maturity winning the day, but so it goes. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I review the books I read on Instagram at @let_them_eat_books so would love to see you over there, thank everyone who commented and encouraged me to finish this!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! It's harder to write a Watford fanfic than an au I'm finding, but hopefully I will figure it all out!


End file.
